Re-org! New Microsoft CEO says ‘We must rediscover our soul’

Microsoft employees woke up at 6 a.m. today with a long email from new CEO Satya Nadella titled “Bold Ambition and Our Core.”

Uh oh. Smells like a re-org.

The core message from the man named to succeed Steve Ballmer in February: “In order to accelerate our innovation, we must rediscover our soul — our unique core.”

“More recently, we have described ourselves as a ‘devices and services’ company. While the devices and services description was helpful in starting our transformation, we now need to hone in on our unique strategy.

“At our core, Microsoft is the productivity and platform company for the mobile-first and cloud-first world,” Nadella wrote.

The new boss sees Microsoft as having “a unique ability to harmonize the world’s devices, apps, docs, data and social networks in digital work and life experiences so that people are at the center and are empowered to do more and achieve more with what is becoming an increasingly scarce commodity – time!”

That doesn’t mean the XBox is going anywhere.

“We are fortunate to have Xbox in our family to go after this opportunity with unique and bold innovation,” says Nadella. “Bottom line, we will continue to innovate and grow our fan base with Xbox while also creating additive business value for Microsoft.”

And Nadella sees a bigger role for Cortana, aka Microsoft’s Siri. “In the future, it will be even more intelligent as a personal assistant who takes notes, books meetings and understands if my question about the weather is to determine my clothes for the day or is intended to start a complex task like booking a family vacation.”

Now, for the re-org part:

Nothing is off the table in how we think about shifting our culture to deliver on this core strategy. Organizations will change. Mergers and acquisitions will occur. Job responsibilities will evolve. New partnerships will be formed. Tired traditions will be questioned. Our priorities will be adjusted. New skills will be built. New ideas will be heard. New hires will be made. Processes will be simplified. And if you want to thrive at Microsoft and make a world impact, you and your team must add numerous more changes to this list that you will be enthusiastic about driving.

Yeah, there was talk of “taking actions to flatten the organization and develop leaner business processes.” But few tech CEOs leaven that by dropping a Rainer Maria Rilke quote to soften the blow, as Nadella did Thursday: “The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.”